Ah, but what a cruel world it is. The following summer I had dreams of grandeur for my little business, but while setting up the stand I noticed that competition had surfaced. Two of my neighbors had hopped on the bandwagon and worse, two more kids down the block started their own, too! Business was dismal. Still clear in my mind are the feelings that were provoked when I had not seen even one customer in two days. Optimistic being practically my middle name, I reassured myself that there were still people existing on this planet and that business would pick up tomorrow.
The next evening I was waiting for my favorite show to come on the television. Commercial after commercial left me wondering when the show would start. Then an idea hit me, so I ran to my room and began brainstorming. In the morning I proudly hung my new commercial on my stand - "Sour Puss, the best lemonade in town!"
Before long the first customer arrived. He walked up to me and looked me in the eye and asked, "What makes yours the best?" Freezing and then scrambling for some kind of answer, I remember saying something about being the first, the original, and the best. He bought it and all of a sudden I was out of my rut. The next few customers asked me the same question, allowing me to hone my response. They all bought it, too! This was a remarkable feeling; I faced the competition and prevailed!
That evening I regaled the whole story to my parents, going on and on about how my commercial had drawn all the customers to "Sour Puss". My new plans were to sell cookies, cake, pie, and newspapers to crush the competition. When I finally snapped out of it I laughed out loud to see both of my parents looking at me wide-eyed and jaw-dropped. They were both wondering who this twelve-year-old girl was and about the cardboard supermarket that she was planning to open at the end of the driveway...
My parents convinced me that this was a huge career to embark on, requiring concentrations in entrepreneurship, business, and marketing. Agreeing that this path was surely mine, I made it a point to be at the top of my class in accounting, entrepreneurial studies, financing, and marketing. My ambition led me to take on many odd jobs, not for the money, but to learn how businesses operated and advertised. This experience has taught me that to succeed in business I need to be able to sell somebody something somewhere. In order to prepare myself for this task it was necessary for me to receive high honors in English and Spanish and have been an honor student throughout my entire school career. My MCAS scores have earned the Jon and Abigail Adams Scholarship which I hope to apply toward my degree in business.
I constantly try to expand my business sense. Today when confronted with ad after ad on television, in newspapers and magazines, billboards, and subways, instead of zoning out or getting frustrated, I compare their ads. This compels me to further study how some businesses have become successful and how they run their factories or services. I often find myself coming up with new business ventures and writing business plans for them, even creating whole ad campaigns behind them.
Last weekend I went to the mall with my girlfriends. We sat at a table in the food court and as they discussed the latest fashions, movies, and music, my attention was drawn to this one store. All the other stores were empty but this one was packed. I grabbed a napkin from the table and started to jot down some information about what this store was doing right that all the other stores were doing wrong. As I did this my best friend announced, "Oh! There she goes again, another business idea!" Quickly I went into a rant about the right product and guerilla marketing. With the right this and the right that, those empty stores could be made into real competitors... I looked up and they were all staring at me wide-eyed and jaw-dropped, wondering who this girl was who wanted to change the entire face of the mall. Haha! What a world this truly is.